5 ms·

Something, something, “Build your brand by writing.” Something, something, “Communicating with words is as important as communicating with code in a team setti

Something, something, “Build your brand by writing.” Something, something, “Communicating with words is as important as communicating with code in a team setting.” But moving up Maslow’s Hierarchy, writing about ideas you want to personally explore (a’la pg) is exactly how you force yourself to think those ideas through. It’s valuable in its own right, whether people read them and shower you with the “three Ps” or not. So write, and write often. Do not spend great amounts of time carefully choosing what yo write. Just write, and incorporate feedback into your work. Revise endlessly, much as one refactors software endlessly. Do not write about things that don’t interest you just because you get more up-boats for “How to use Flibbitz in a managed K8s container with XML configuration,” unless Flibbitz personally interests you. Write about what tickles your brain, and keep at it incessantly. What little (and it’s not much in the scale of things) success I’ve had writing essays and books can all be traced back to writing about things I personally care about.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wappa 6y ago
What are the three P's?
- andrei_says_ 6y ago
  Yes, which? https://www.google.com/search?q=the+three+p%27s+of+writing&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS590US590&oq=the+three+ps+of+wr&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.15813j0j7&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=the+three+p%27s+of+writing&r...
  - severine 6y ago
    Haha, yeah! I'm having a blast looking at the search results... Planet, People, Profit. People, process, product People, Process, Performance Management Personalization, Permanence, Pervasiveness Polydipsia, Polyuria, Polyphagia Product, Price, Place and Promotion Preserve / Prevent / Promote Prediction, Protection, Preparation Purpose, Process, Product Protect, Procreate, Provide. Protect, Provide, Profess Pee, Paper, Poo Purity, Patience, Perseverance Provision, Protection, Participation Presence, Promises, Power Of God Piracy, Portability, Profitability Presentation, Planning, Processing But still no idea... OP, which is it?
    - TheDarkOne 6y ago
      Practice, Practice, and Practice, I think.
- braythwayt 6y ago
  Power. Prestige. Pecuniarum.
julianeon 6y ago
My experience with low-barrier-to-entry fields like writing is, to make it to the top (which is what you want to do), you almost certainly have to do better, and have more specialized knowledge than, common-sense truisms like: work hard, be a good explainer, that sort of thing. That's all low-barrier-to-entry knowledge. I'm not going to get much traction on Google with a tutorial like, "hello world" in Python. You have to improve on this low-value stuff to climb the ranks - which is what a book like this can offer. I would respectfully say the advice you're offering here is a little too unfocused and low-yield, in the age of SEO. Example: I'm a busy guy. I've written tutorials before, and it's pretty dispiriting to spend, say, 6+ hours writing something substantial (a realistic outlay for an article), only to see it wither away at the bottom of the Google rankings. Similar example: build a no-name e-commerce store, watch it do nothing except cost you money. So, you start to search for experts who know what they're doing - say, for e-commerce, SEO. They're not scam artists: they encourage you to write real, valuable content, and the good ones produce that themselves. But they also say, you have to be more strategic than just like, low prices, placed next to paint-by-numbers articles. You have to search out keywords or areas that haven't been filled yet, and filled those. And they often know counterintuitive things, that come from hard-won experience. Example: for e-commerce, they say, you actually shouldn't just throw something up on the blog every week (a reasonable interpretation of the 'write often' advice). Instead, research a good area, then write a high-quality article, that you really invest in, over the course of several weeks. One such article can be worth 100+ low-quality articles which are basically just 'putting this up there to meet my quota for the week'. Internet traffic isn't linear - so it pays to have a strategy that acknowledges this, and builds off it. That's one reason why I'm thinking of buying this book, since I think the non-obvious stuff is worth more than people commonly assume.
- braythwayt 6y ago
  You’re talking about financial success, or something akin to that. I’m talking about personal development. Writing is nothing like an ecommerce store to me. It is to you. Thus, my suggestions are not only irrelevant to you, they may be counterproductive for what you think is important.
  - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wappa 6y ago

What are the three P's?

andrei_says_ 6y ago
Yes, which? https://www.google.com/search?q=the+three+p%27s+of+writing&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS590US590&oq=the+three+ps+of+wr&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.15813j0j7&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=the+three+p%27s+of+writing&r...
- severine 6y ago
  Haha, yeah! I'm having a blast looking at the search results... Planet, People, Profit. People, process, product People, Process, Performance Management Personalization, Permanence, Pervasiveness Polydipsia, Polyuria, Polyphagia Product, Price, Place and Promotion Preserve / Prevent / Promote Prediction, Protection, Preparation Purpose, Process, Product Protect, Procreate, Provide. Protect, Provide, Profess Pee, Paper, Poo Purity, Patience, Perseverance Provision, Protection, Participation Presence, Promises, Power Of God Piracy, Portability, Profitability Presentation, Planning, Processing But still no idea... OP, which is it?
  - TheDarkOne 6y ago
    Practice, Practice, and Practice, I think.
braythwayt 6y ago
Power. Prestige. Pecuniarum.

julianeon 6y ago

My experience with low-barrier-to-entry fields like writing is, to make it to the top (which is what you want to do), you almost certainly have to do better, and have more specialized knowledge than, common-sense truisms like: work hard, be a good explainer, that sort of thing. That's all low-barrier-to-entry knowledge. I'm not going to get much traction on Google with a tutorial like, "hello world" in Python. You have to improve on this low-value stuff to climb the ranks - which is what a book like this can offer. I would respectfully say the advice you're offering here is a little too unfocused and low-yield, in the age of SEO. Example: I'm a busy guy. I've written tutorials before, and it's pretty dispiriting to spend, say, 6+ hours writing something substantial (a realistic outlay for an article), only to see it wither away at the bottom of the Google rankings. Similar example: build a no-name e-commerce store, watch it do nothing except cost you money. So, you start to search for experts who know what they're doing - say, for e-commerce, SEO. They're not scam artists: they encourage you to write real, valuable content, and the good ones produce that themselves. But they also say, you have to be more strategic than just like, low prices, placed next to paint-by-numbers articles. You have to search out keywords or areas that haven't been filled yet, and filled those. And they often know counterintuitive things, that come from hard-won experience. Example: for e-commerce, they say, you actually shouldn't just throw something up on the blog every week (a reasonable interpretation of the 'write often' advice). Instead, research a good area, then write a high-quality article, that you really invest in, over the course of several weeks. One such article can be worth 100+ low-quality articles which are basically just 'putting this up there to meet my quota for the week'. Internet traffic isn't linear - so it pays to have a strategy that acknowledges this, and builds off it. That's one reason why I'm thinking of buying this book, since I think the non-obvious stuff is worth more than people commonly assume.

braythwayt 6y ago
You’re talking about financial success, or something akin to that. I’m talking about personal development. Writing is nothing like an ecommerce store to me. It is to you. Thus, my suggestions are not only irrelevant to you, they may be counterproductive for what you think is important.
- 6y ago